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Ukraine army's humiliations pile up as eastern push fizzles
by Staff Writers
Kiev (AFP) April 16, 2014


NATO to deploy more forces in eastern Europe: Rasmussen
Brussels (AFP) April 16, 2014 - NATO said Wednesday it will deploy additional air, sea and land forces in eastern Europe in response to the worsening crisis in Ukraine and take further action if needed.

"Today we have agreed a package of military measures," NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after a meeting of ambassadors of all 28 members of the transatlantic alliance.

"We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water... and more readiness on the land," he said, adding that NATO defence plans will be "reviewed and reinforced".

The announcement came as Ukrainian and pro-Russian forces faced off and after President Vladimir Putin warned Ukraine was on the brink of civil war, stoking fears of outright Russian intervention.

Rasmussen refused to detail what new forces would be deployed and where, but said there would be increased air sorties over the Baltic Sea, with additional ships there and in the eastern Mediterranean.

The decision will be implemented "immediately" and "more will follow, if needed, in the weeks and months to come," he added.

As the Ukraine crisis has unfolded, NATO has taken a number of similar steps, with the United States sending fighter aircraft to the Baltic states and Poland to bolster confidence in member countries once ruled by Moscow.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -- which border Russia and have sizeable ethnic Russian populations -- have all sought reassurance, as have Ukraine neighbours Poland and Romania.

Freed from Moscow's Cold War grasp with the fall of Communism in the late 1980s, many eastern Europe states have readily joined NATO.

But Russia, especially under Putin, has regarded NATO's eastward expansion as a direct security threat.

The former Soviet states "are increasingly worried as they see the crisis getting worse by the hour," said one diplomat.

"So far, NATO's response has been measured," said another diplomat, noting that the allies had not put troops on the ground, set up bases or increased their presence in the Black Sea.

- Russian force levels unchanged -

Rasmussen said NATO would stand by any ally against any threat, and that the measures announced were entirely in keeping with international law and the alliance's commitment to deterrence.

US General Philip Breedlove, NATO's top commander, made the same point separately.

The measures "are defensive in nature and designed to reassure our allies in the east of our unshakeable committment to our collective defence responsibilities."

Breedlove, who estimated earlier this month that Russian troops on Ukraine's border could attack on 12 hours' notice and seize vast amounts of territory in three to five days, said there had been no significant change in their posture.

"We have seen a large force, all the numbers remain the same, readiness remains very high and the capability of this force is very high," he said.

Asked about calls for permanent bases in the Baltic states, Rasmussen said the issue was not discussed at the meeting.

There "will be follow-on work" to the steps now taken, he said, adding the alliance continued "exploring ways to possibly further enhance our collective defence."

He also repeated calls for Russia "to be part of the solution, to stop destabilising Ukraine, pull back its troops from the borders and make clear it does not support the violent actions of well-armed militias of pro-Russian separatists."

Asked what bearing the measures could have on EU-US talks with Russia and Ukraine in Geneva on Thursday, Rasmussen said: "We have taken military steps which we think are necessary to enhance deterrence."

At the same time, "we agree that a political solution is the only way forward," he said.

The humiliation Wednesday of the Ukrainian army in its much-vaunted "anti-terrorist" push into separatist eastern territory makes an embarrassing string of failures even worse.

Allowing pro-Russian rebels to seize six of its armoured personnel carriers and disarm its servicemen was evidence of a poorly planned and executed operation, analysts said.

They pointed out that the region, the Donbass, is hostile to Kiev's new, pro-EU leaders, and home to magnates and police reluctant to face down the separatists.

"It was a mistake to launch an 'anti-terrorist operation' in the Donbass where the overwhelming majority is against the government. Targeted operations against armed groups is one thing, but when there are tanks in the street, people block them," said a Ukrainian political analyst, Volodymyr Fesenko.

A military expert at the Razumkov think-tank in Kiev, Oleksiy Melnik, criticised the government for hesitating to use force and in the end sending in a smaller force than the one implied when it announced its "major operation" on Sunday.

"The arguments that 'We mustn't provoke Russia' are absurd in the current situation, because Russia needs no pretext to carry out its plan. The reason behind what happened is government inaction," he said.

- Demoralised army -

"The armoured vehicles were stopped by unarmed civilians, who they cannot shoot. That showed how badly thought-through the operation was, Melnik said.

"These sorts of defeats are demoralising the army, whose fighting spirit has already been undermined by the events in Crimea," where Ukrainian soldiers ended up abandoning their units without offering any resistance to the Russian forces, he said.

Under-funded and possessing outdated weapons, the 130,000-strong Ukrainian army is easily overshadowed by the Russian one, which is six times bigger -- and which currently has 40,000 men massed on Ukraine's eastern border, according to NATO.

Kiev asserts that the armed, pro-Russian rebels are being managed by Russian military intelligence officers on the ground. Several hundred trained military personnel carrying the sort of weapons used by Russia's elite forces and wearing uniforms stripped of any insignia can be seen in the region, but Moscow denies they are its soldiers.

Another military expert, Mykola Sungurovsky, said Ukraine has sent its best men and equipment to the border to protect it.

"But they are only capable of rebuffing a first assault. After that, they would need to turn to guerrilla actions because the balance of forces is not in our favour."

Several analysts observed that Ukraine's military is the main force loyal to Kiev's government in the east; the police, they said, did nothing to stop the pro-Russian assaults on public buildings and police stations in several towns in the region.

In Donetsk, the main city in the east, "the situation is very complicated," the interim first deputy prime minister Vitaliy Yarema acknowledged on Wednesday. "Some police officers are at the command of the separatists."

But Mykhaylo Kornyenko, a former deputy interior minister, said the police should not be blamed.

"Police stations were attacked by men with combat experience whereas they lack such experience. If they had used their weapons, the consequences could have been catastrophic."

Olexandra Rudneva, an analyst at the Strategic Studies Institute, said, however, that many police are also bitter towards the new authorities for not punishing those responsible for the deaths of more than 100 people during the mass protests in Kiev early this year, and for being used as scapegoats for that bloodshed.

"In this situation, whoever is in power in Kiev would have a tough time exerting influence over the police, especially in Donetsk," she said.

.


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'Criminal' use of force by Ukraine would imperil talks: Lavrov
Beijing (AFP) April 15, 2014
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday warned Kiev against using force to quell pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine, saying the "criminal" act would undermine talks planned in Geneva. The four-way meeting set for Thursday involving top diplomats from Russia, Ukraine, the United States and the European Union is the latest step in a flurry of diplomacy aimed at easing the wor ... read more


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